Carl Van Vechten (June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.[1] He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult life, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime.

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Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was the youngest child of Charles and Ada Van Vechten.[2]:14 Both of his parents were well educated. His father was a wealthy and prominent banker. His mother established the Cedar Rapids public library and had great musical talent.[3] As a child, Van Vechten developed a passion for music and theatre.[4] He graduated from Washington High School in 1898.[5]

After High School, Van Vechten was eager to take the next steps in his life, but found it difficult to pursue his passions in Iowa. He described his hometown as "that unloved town". In order to advance his education, he decided in 1899 to study at the University of Chicago[6][4] where he studied a variety of topics including music, art and opera. As a student, he became increasingly interested in writing and wrote for the college newspaper, the University of Chicago Weekly.

After graduating from college in 1903, Van Vechten accepted a job as a columnist for the Chicago American. In his column "The Chaperone" Van Vechten covered many different topics through a style of semi autobiographical gossip and criticism.[4] During his time with the Chicago American, he was occasionally asked to include photographs with his column. This was the first time he was thought to have experimented with photography which would later become one of his greatest passions.[4] Van Vechten was fired from his position with the Chicago American because of what was described as an elaborate and complicated style of writing. Some described his contributions to the paper as "lowering the tone of the Hearst papers".[3] In 1906, he moved to New York City. He was hired as the assistant music critic at The New York Times.[7] His interest in opera had him take a leave of absence from the paper in 1907 to travel to Europe and explore opera.[1]

While in England he married his long-time friend from Cedar Rapids, Anna Snyder. He returned to his job at The New York Times in 1909, where he became the first American critic of modern dance. Under the leadership of Van Vechten's social mentor, Mabel Dodge Luhan, he became engrossed in avant-garde art. This was an innovative type of art which explores new styles or subject matters and is thought to be well ahead of other art in terms of technique, subject matter and application. He also began to frequently attend groundbreaking musical premieres at the time, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and Loie Fuller were performing in New York City. He also attended premiers in Paris where he met American author and poet Gertrude Stein in 1913 .[3] He became a devoted friend and champion of Stein. He was considered to be one of Steins most enthusiastic fans.[8] They continued corresponding for the remainder of Stein's life, and at her death she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor; he helped to bring into print her unpublished writings.[2]:306 A collection of the letters between Van Vechten and Stein has also been published.[9]

Van Vechten wrote a piece called "How to Read Gertrude Stein" for the arts magazine The Trend. In his piece Van Vechten attempted to demystify Gertrude Stein and bring clarity to her works. In his piece Van Vechten came to the conclusion that Gertrude Stein is a difficult author to understand and she can be best understood when one has been guided through her work by an "expert insider". He writes that "special writers require special readers".[10]

The marriage to Anna Snyder ended in divorce in 1912 and he wed actress Fania Marinoff in 1914.[11] Van Vechten and Marinoff were known for ignoring the social separation of races during the times and for inviting blacks to their home for social gatherings. They were also known to attend public gatherings for black people and even on occasion visit black friends in their homes.

Although Van Vechten's marriage to his wife Fania Marinoff, lasted for 50 years, there were often arguments between them over Van Vechten's affairs with men.[8] Van Vechten was known to have romantic and sexual relationships with men, especially Mark Lutz.[7]

Mark Lutz (1901–1968) was born in Richmond, Virginia and was introduced to Van Vechten by Hunter Stagg in New York in 1931. Lutz was a model for some of Van Vechten's earliest experiments with photography. The friendship lasted until Van Vechten's death. At Lutz's death, as per his wishes, the correspondence with Van Vechten, amounting to 10,000 letters, was destroyed. Lutz donated his collection of Van Vechten's photographs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[12]

Several books of Van Vechten's essays on various subjects such as music and literature were published between 1915 and 1920 and Vechten would also serve as an informal scout for the newly formed Alfred A. Knopf.[13] Between 1922 and 1930 Knopf published seven novels by him, starting with Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works and ending with Parties.[14] His sexuality is most clearly reflected in his intensely homoerotic portraits of working class men.

As an appreciator of the arts, Van Vechten was extremely intrigued by the explosion of creativity which was occurring in Harlem. He was drawn towards the tolerance of Harlem society and its draw towards black writers and artists. He also felt most accepted there as a gay man.[15] Van Vechten promoted many of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman. Van Vechten's controversial novel Nigger Heaven[6] was published in 1926. His essay "Negro Blues Singers" was published in Vanity Fair in 1926. Biographer Edward White suggests Van Vechten was convinced that Negro culture was the essence of America.[2]

Van Vechten played a critical role in the Harlem Renaissance and helped to bring greater clarity to the African American movement. However, for a long time he was also seen as a very controversial figure. In Van Vechten's early writings he claimed that Black people were born to be entertainers and sexually "free". In other words, he believed that black people should be free to explore their sexuality and singers should follow their natural talents such as jazz, spirituals and blues.[15]

In Harlem Van Vechten often attended opera and cabarets. He was credited for the surge in white interest in Harlem nightlife and culture. He was also involved in helping well respected writers like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen find publishers for their first works.[16]

In 2001, Emily Bernard published "Remember Me to Harlem". This was a collection of letters which documented the long friendship between Van Vechten and Langston Hughes, who publicly defended Nigger Heaven, and enjoyed Van Vechten's mischievous sense of humor.[15] Bernard's book Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White explores the messy and uncomfortable realities of race, and the complicated tangle of black and white in America.[15]

His older brother Ralph Van Vechten died on June 28, 1927; when Ralph's widow Fannie died in 1928, Van Vechten inherited $1 million invested in a trust fund, which was unaffected by the stock market crash of 1929 and provided financial support for Carl and Fania.[2]:242–244[17]

Van Vechten House and Studio, Manhattan, New York City, 2017

By the start of the 1930s and at age 50, Van Vechten was finished with writing and took up photography, using his apartment at 150 West 55th Street as a studio, where he photographed many notable persons.[18][19]

After the 1930s Van Vechten published little writing, though he continued writing letters to many correspondents.

Van Vechten died in 1964, at the age of 84, in New York City. His ashes were scattered over Shakespeare Gardens, Central Park, Manhattan, New York[20] He was the subject of a 1968 biography by Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades,[21] as well as Edward White's 2014 biography, The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America.[2]

Most of Van Vechten's personal papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The Beinecke Library also holds a collection titled "Living Portraits: Carl Van Vechten's Color Photographs Of African Americans, 1939–1964", a collection of 1,884 color Kodachrome slides.[22]

Saul Mauriber, after a photograph of Salvador Dalí by Halsman, 1944 by Van Vechten

The Library of Congress has a collection of approximately 1,400 photographs, which it acquired in 1966 from Saul Mauriber (May 21, 1915 – February 12, 2003). There is also a collection of Van Vechten's photographs in the Prentiss Taylor collection in the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, and a Van Vechten collection at Fisk University. The Museum of the City of New York's collection includes 2,174 of Carl Van Vechten's photographs. Brandeis University's department of Archives & Special Collections holds 1,689 Carl Van Vechten portraits.[23] Van Vechten also donated materials to Fisk University to form the George Gershwin Memorial Collection of Music and Musical Literature.[2]:284

At age 40, Van Vechten wrote the book Peter Whiffle which established him as a respected novelist. This novel was recognized as contemporary and an important work to the collection of Harlem Renaissance history. In his novel autobiographical facts were arranged into a fictional form. In addition to Peter Whiffle, Van Vechten wrote several other novels. One of them, The Tattooed Countess, was a disguised manipulation of his memories of growing up in Cedar Rapids.[8] His book the Tiger in the House explores the quirks and qualities of Van Vechtens most beloved animal, the cat.[26]

One of his most controversial novels Nigger Heaven was received with both controversy and praise. Van Vechten called this book "my Negro novel". He intended for this novel to depict how African Americans were living in Harlem and not about the suffrage of Blacks in the South who were dealing with racism and lynchings. Although many encouraged Van Vechten to reconsider giving his novel such a controversial name, he could not resist having an incendiary title. Some worried that his title would take away from the content of the book. In one letter his father wrote to him "Whatever you may be compelled to say in the book," he wrote, "your present title will not be understood & I feel certain you should change it."[27]

Many Black readers were divided over how the novel depicted African Americans. Some saw the novel as depicting Black people as "alien and strange" while others valued the novel for its representation of African Americans as everyday people, with complexity and flaws just like the average White person was. Some of the novel's supporters included Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes and Gertrude Stein. who all defended the novel for bringing Harlem society and racial issues to the forefront of America.[28]

His supporters also sent him letters to voice their opinions of the novel. Alain Locke sent Van Vechten a letter from Berlin citing his novel Nigger Heaven and the excitement surrounding its release as his primary reason for making an imminent return home. In addition Gertrude Stein sent Van Vechten a letter from France writing that the novel was the best thing he had ever written. Stein also played an important role in the development of the novel.[29]

Well known critics of this novel included African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois and Black novelist Wallace Thurman. Du Bois dismised the novel as being "cheap melodrama"[15] Decades after the book was published, literary critic and scholar Ralph Ellison remembered Van Vechten as a bad influence, an unpleasant character who "introduced a note of decadence into Afro-American literary matters which was not needed." In 1981, historian and author of a classic study of the Harlem Renaissance, David Levering Lewis, called Nigger Heaven a "colossal fraud," a seemingly uplifting book with a message that was overshadowed by "the throb of the tom-tom." He viewed Van Vechten as being driven by "a mixture of commercialism and patronizing sympathy".[27]

1.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

2.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year

3.
University of Chicago
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The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It holds top-ten positions in national and international rankings and measures. The university currently enrolls approximately 5,700 students in the College, Chicagos physics department helped develop the worlds first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction beneath the viewing stands of universitys Stagg Field. The university is home to the University of Chicago Press. With an estimated date of 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be housed at the university. Both Harper and future president Robert Maynard Hutchins advocated for Chicagos curriculum to be based upon theoretical and perennial issues rather than on applied sciences, the University of Chicago has many prominent alumni. 92 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as professors, students, faculty, or staff, similarly,34 faculty members and 16 alumni have been awarded the MacArthur “Genius Grant”. Rockefeller on land donated by Marshall Field, while the Rockefeller donation provided money for academic operations and long-term endowment, it was stipulated that such money could not be used for buildings. The original physical campus was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans like Silas B, Cobb who provided the funds for the campus first building, Cobb Lecture Hall, and matched Marshall Fields pledge of $100,000. Organized as an independent institution legally, it replaced the first Baptist university of the same name, william Rainey Harper became the modern universitys first president on July 1,1891, and the university opened for classes on October 1,1892. The business school was founded thereafter in 1898, and the law school was founded in 1902, Harper died in 1906, and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929. During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support, in 1896, the university affiliated with Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice, several University of Chicago professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the university. The program passed into history by 1910, in 1929, the universitys fifth president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, took office, the university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. In 1933, Hutchins proposed a plan to merge the University of Chicago. During his term, the University of Chicago Hospitals finished construction, also, the Committee on Social Thought, an institution distinctive of the university, was created. Money that had been raised during the 1920s and financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation helped the school to survive through the Great Depression, during World War II, the university made important contributions to the Manhattan Project. The university was the site of the first isolation of plutonium and of the creation of the first artificial, in the early 1950s, student applications declined as a result of increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood

4.
Photographer
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A photographer is a person who makes photographs. As in other arts, the definitions of amateur and professional are not entirely categorical, a professional photographer is likely to take photographs to make money, by salary or through the display, sale or use of those photographs. An amateur photographer may take photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, as a person without a monetary motivation. A professional photographer may be an employee, for example of a newspaper, or may contract to cover a planned event such as a wedding or graduation. Others, including paparazzi and fine art photographers, are freelancers, first making a picture, some workers, such as crime scene detectives, estate agents, journalists and scientists, make photographs as part of other work. Photographers who produce moving rather than still pictures are often called cinematographers, videographers or camera operators, an amateur may make considerable sums entering work in contests for prize money or through occasional inclusion of their work in magazines or the archive of a photo agency. The term professional may also imply preparation, for example, by academic study, Photographers are also categorized based on the subjects they photograph. Some photographers explore subjects typical of such as landscape, still life. The exclusive right of photographers to copy and use their products is protected by copyright, countless industries purchase photographs for use in publications and on products. This is usually referred to as usage fee and is used to distinguish from production fees, an additional contract and royalty would apply for each additional use of the photograph. The contract may be for one year, or other duration. The photographer usually charges a royalty as well as a one-time fee, the contract may be for non-exclusive use of the photograph or for exclusive use of the photograph. The contract can also stipulate that the photographer is entitled to audit the company for determination of royalty payments. A royalty is also based on the size at which the photo will be used in a magazine or book. Photos taken by a photographer working on assignment are often work for hire belonging to the company or publication unless stipulated otherwise by contract. There are major companies who have maintained catalogues of stock photography and images for decades, such as Getty Images, commercial photographers may also promote their work to advertising and editorial art buyers via printed and online marketing vehicles. Many people upload their photographs to social networking websites and other websites and those interested in legal precision may explicitly release them to the public domain or under a free content license. Some sites, including Wikimedia Commons, are punctilious about licenses, the dictionary definition of photographer at Wiktionary Media related to Photographers at Wikimedia Commons

5.
Fine-art photography
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Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer. Here is a list of definitions of the related terms art photography, artistic photography, Fine art photography, A picture that is produced for sale or display rather than one that is produced in response to a commercial commission. Fine art photography, The production of images to fulfill the vision of a photographer. Artistic photography, A frequently used but somewhat vague term, the idea underlying it is that the producer of a given picture has aimed at something more than a merely realistic rendering of the subject, and has attempted to convey a personal impression. Fine art photography, Also called decor photography, or photo decor and that can be used as wall art. Among the definitions that can be found in scholarly articles are, In 1961, Dr S. D. Jouhar founded the Photographic Fine Art Association, and he was its Chairman. Their definition of Fine Art was “Creating images that evoke emotion by a process in which ones mind. A1986 ethnographic and historical study by Schwartz did not directly define fine art photography, historically, has sometimes been applied to any photography whose intention is aesthetic, as distinguished from scientific, commercial, or journalistic, for this meaning, use photography. One photography historian claimed that the earliest exponent of Fine Art or composition photography was John Edwin Mayall, successful attempts to make fine art photography can be traced to Victorian era practitioners such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander and others. In the U. S. F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen were instrumental in making photography a fine art, in the UK as recently as 1960, photography was not really recognised as a Fine Art. Dr S. D. Jouhar said, when he formed the Photographic Fine Art Association at that time - At the moment photography is not generally recognized as anything more than a craft, in the USA photography has been openly accepted as Fine Art in certain official quarters. It is shown in galleries and exhibitions as an Art, there is not corresponding recognition in this country. The London Salon shows pictorial photography, but it is not generally understood as an art, whether a work shows aesthetic qualities or not it is designated Pictorial Photography which is a very ambiguous term. Breakthrough star artists in the 1970s and 80s, such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Farber, others investigated a snapshot aesthetic approach. American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts. Until the mid-1950s it was considered vulgar and pretentious to frame a photograph for a gallery exhibition. Prints were usually simply pasted onto blockboard or plywood, or given a white border in the darkroom, prints were thus shown without any glass reflections obscuring them. Steichens famous The Family of Man exhibition was unframed, the pictures pasted to panels, even as late as 1966 Bill Brandts MoMA show was unframed, with simple prints pasted to thin plywood

6.
Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s, many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this flowering of Negro literature, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans, freedmen, began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic, soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was denounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. By the late 1870s, Democratic whites managed to power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites and they established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. Convict laborers were typically subject to forms of corporal punishment, overwork. While a small number of blacks were able to land shortly after the Civil War. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers, most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves and their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North, African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life, uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the middle class. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, in 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War, due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North

7.
Gertrude Stein
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Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, in 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas, an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde, the book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. Her books include Q. E. D. about a romantic affair involving several of Steins female friends, Fernhurst, a fictional story about a romantic affair, Three Lives. In Tender Buttons, Stein commented on lesbian sexuality and her activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary. After the war ended, Stein expressed admiration for another Nazi collaborator, some have argued that certain accounts of Steins wartime activities have amounted to a witch hunt. Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3,1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to upper-middle-class Jewish parents, Daniel and her father was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings. German and English were spoken in their home, when Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna, and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the sensibilities of European history. Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oaklands Sabbath school, during their residence in Oakland, they lived for four years on a ten-acre lot, and Stein built many memories of California there. She would often go on excursions with her brother, Leo, Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, but she read often, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, Burns, Smollett, Fielding, and more. When Stein was 14 years old, her mother died, Three years later, her father died as well. Steins eldest brother, Michael Stein, then took over the family holdings and in 1892 arranged for Gertrude and another sister, Bertha. Here she lived with her uncle David Bachrach, who in 1877 had married Gertrudes maternal aunt, in Baltimore, Stein met Claribel and Etta Cone, who held Saturday evening salons that she would later emulate in Paris. The Cones shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it, Stein attended Radcliffe College, then an annex of Harvard University, from 1893 to 1897 and was a student of psychologist William James. In 1934, behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner interpreted Steins difficult poem Tender Buttons as an example of normal motor automatism. In a letter Stein wrote during the 1930s, she explained that she never accepted the theory of writing, here can be automatic movements

8.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Cedar Rapids /ˈsiːdər ˈræpᵻdz/ is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River,20 miles north of Iowa City and 100 miles northeast of Des Moines and it is a part of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor of Linn, Benton, Cedar, Jones, Johnson, and Washington counties. Cedar Rapids is a hub of the state, located in the core of the Interstate 380. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 126,326, the estimated population of the three-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the nearby cities of Marion and Hiawatha, was 255,452 in 2008. In the 1990s and 2000s, Hollywood would feature several Cedar Rapidians including actors Bobby Driscoll, Ashton Kutcher, Elijah Wood, the city is also the setting for the musical The Pajama Game and the comedy film Cedar Rapids. Cedar Rapids is nicknamed the City of Five Seasons, for the fifth season, the symbol of the five seasons is the Tree of Five Seasons sculpture in downtown along the north river bank. The name Five Seasons and representations of the sculpture throughout the city in many forms. The location of present-day Cedar Rapids was in the territory of the Fox, the first permanent settler, Osgood Shepherd, arrived in 1838. When Cedar Rapids was first established in 1838, William Stone named the town Columbus, in 1841 it was resurveyed and renamed by N. B. They named the town Cedar Rapids for the rapids in the Cedar River at the site, Cedar Rapids was incorporated on January 15,1849. Cedar Rapids annexed the community of Kingston in 1870, the economic growth of Cedar Rapids increased in 1871 upon the founding of the Sinclair meatpacking company. In 2010, the Census Bureau reported Cedar Rapids population as 87. 98% white, and 5. 58% black. During the Iowa flood of 2008, the Cedar River reached a high of 31.12 feet on June 13,2008. 1,126 city blocks were flooded, or more than 10 square miles,561 city blocks were severely damaged and this is 14% of the citys total area. It is estimated 1300 or more properties are to be demolished in the Cedar Rapids area because of the flood, more than 4000 members of the Iowa National Guard were called up to assist the city. The temporary levies became saturated not only with the flood waters, the inundation of southern Minnesota, central and western Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa by Hurricane Paines remnants began on September 21 and 22 and continued until the end of September 2016. This cresting in Cedar Rapids was below the estimate of 25 feet and the revised estimate of 23 feet. This flood was above levels considered to have about a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given year

9.
Modern dance
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Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is considered to have emerged as a rejection of. Socioeconomic and cultural factors contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, moving into the 1960s, new ideas about dance began to emerge, as a response to earlier dance forms and to social changes. Eventually, postmodern dance artists would reject the formalism of modern dance, and include such as performance art, contact improvisation, release technique. American modern dance can be divided into three periods or eras, Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content has morphed and shifted from one choreographer to another, artists such as Graham and Horton developed techniques in the Central Modern Period that are still taught worldwide, and numerous other types of modern dance exist today. In America, increasing industrialization, the rise of a class, and the decline of Victorian social strictures led to, among other changes. It was in this atmosphere that a new dance was emerging as much from a rejection of social structures as from a dissatisfaction with ballet, womens colleges began offering aesthetic dance courses by the end of the 1880s. Emil Rath, who wrote at length about this emerging artform at the stated, Music and rhythmic bodily movement are twin sisters of art. 1877, Isadora Duncan was a predecessor of modern dance with her stress on the center or torso, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes, and incorporation of humor into emotional expression. She was inspired by classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, natural forces, and new American athleticism such as skipping, running, jumping, leaping and she thought that ballet was ugly and meaningless gymnastics. Although she returned to the United States at various points in her life and she returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927. 1891, Loie Fuller began experimenting with the effect that gas lighting had on her silk costumes, Fuller developed a form of natural movement and improvisation techniques that were used in conjunction with her revolutionary lighting equipment and translucent silk costumes. She patented her apparatus and methods of lighting that included the use of coloured gels and burning chemicals for luminescence. 1905, Ruth St. Denis, influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sada Yacco, developed her translations of Indian culture and her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively while researching Oriental culture and arts. Other pioneers included Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, an accomplished choreographer, she was a founding artist of the first American Dance Festival in Bennington. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of dance and musical theater

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Isadora Duncan
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Angela Isadora Duncan was an American dancer who performed to acclaim throughout Europe. Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan, a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts and her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan, her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Soon after Isadoras birth, her father was exposed in illegal dealings. Her parents divorced when she was an infant, and her mother moved with her family to Oakland and she worked there as a seamstress and piano teacher. From ages six to ten Duncan attended school but, finding it constricting she dropped out, as her family was very poor, she and her three siblings earned money by teaching dance to local children. In 1896 Duncan became part of Augustin Dalys theater company in New York and her father, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan hit some rocks off the coast of Cornwall. Duncan began her career at a very early age by giving lessons in her home to other neighborhood children. Her novel approach to dance was evident in these classes, in which she followed fantasy and improvised. A desire to travel brought her to Chicago where she auditioned for theater companies. This took her to New York City where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies, in New York Duncan took some classes with Marie Bonfanti but was quickly disappointed in ballet routine. Feeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898, there she performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, drawing inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum. The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio where she developed her work, from London, she traveled to Paris, where she drew inspiration from the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900. In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Duncan to tour with her and this took Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique, which emphasized natural movement over the rigid technique of ballet. She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe, to achieve her mission, she opened schools to teach young women her dance philosophy. The first was established in 1904 in Berlin-Grunewald, Germany and this institution was the birthplace of the Isadorables – Anna, Maria-Theresa, Irma, Liesel, Gretel, and Erika. – Duncans protégées, who would go on to continue her legacy, Duncan legally adopted all six Isadorables in 1919, and they took the Duncan last name. Later, Duncan established a school in Paris that was closed due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party where he refers to Duncan under the name Lavinia King, Crowley wrote of Duncan, Isadora Duncan has this gift of gesture in a very high degree

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Anna Pavlova
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Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, Pavlova is most recognized for the creation of the role The Dying Swan and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world. Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was born on February 12,1881 in Ligovo, Saint Petersburg and her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna, was a laundress. When she was three years old her mother married Matvey Pavlov, who adopted her and gave her his surname. Pavlovas passion for the art of ballet was ignited when her mother took her to a performance of Marius Petipas original production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater, the lavish spectacle made an impression on Pavlova. When she was nine, her mother took her to audition for the renowned Imperial Ballet School, because of her youth, and what was considered her sickly appearance, she was rejected, but at age 10 in 1891 she was accepted. She appeared for the first time on stage in Marius Petipas Un conte de fées, young Pavlovas years of training were difficult. Classical ballet did not come easily to her and her severely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, compact body favoured for the ballerina of the time. Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as The broom, undeterred, Pavlova trained to improve her technique. She would practice and practice after learning a step, in 1898, she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres. During her final year at the Imperial Ballet School, she performed roles with the principal company. She graduated in 1899 at age 18, chosen to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée and she made her official début at the Mariinsky Theatre in Pavel Gerdts Les Dryades prétendues. Her performance drew praise from the critics, particularly the great critic, such a style in many ways harked back to the time of the romantic ballet and the great ballerinas of old. Pavlova performed in various variations, pas de deux and pas de trois in such ballets as La Camargo, Le Roi Candaule, Marcobomba. She tried desperately to imitate the renowned Pierina Legnani, Prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theaters, once during class she attempted Legnanis famous fouettés, causing her teacher Pavel Gerdt to fly into a rage. It is positively more than I can bear to see the pressure such steps put on your delicate muscles, I beg you to never again try to imitate those who are physically stronger than you. You must realize that your daintiness and fragility are your greatest assets and you should always do the kind of dancing which brings out your own rare qualities instead of trying to win praise by mere acrobatic tricks. Pavlova rose through the ranks quickly, becoming a favorite of the old maestro Petipa and it was from Petipa himself that Pavlova learned the title role in Paquita, Princess Aspicia in The Pharaohs Daughter, Queen Nisia in Le Roi Candaule, and Giselle

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Loie Fuller
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Loie Fuller was an American dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. An early free dance practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement, Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design. Although Fuller became famous in America through works such as the serpentine dance and her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergère with works such as Fire Dance, an 1896 film of the Serpentine Dance by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière gives a hint of what her performance was like. Fuller held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical compounds for creating color gel, Fuller was also a member of the Société astronomique de France. Fuller supported other pioneering performers, such as fellow United States-born dancer Isadora Duncan, Fuller helped Duncan ignite her European career in 1902 by sponsoring independent concerts in Vienna and Budapest. Loie Fullers original stage name was Louie, in modern French Louïe is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on Louie/Louïe and she was renamed Loïe - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French Loïe, a precursor to Louïe, which means receptiveness or understanding. She was also referred to by the nickname Lo Lo Fuller, Fuller formed a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania, their extensive correspondence has been published. With Queen Marie and American businessman Samuel Hill, Fuller helped found the Maryhill Museum of Art in rural Washington State, Fuller occasionally returned to America to stage performances by her students, the Fullerets or Muses, but spent the end of her life in Paris. She died of pneumonia on January 1,1928 in Paris and she was cremated and her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her sister, Mollie Fuller, had a career as an actress. Fullers work has been experiencing a resurgence of professional and public interest, rhonda K. Garelicks 2009 study entitled Electric Salome demonstrates her centrality not only to dance, but also modernist performance. Sally R. Sommer has written extensively about Fullers life and times Marcia and Richard Current published a biography entitled Loie Fuller, and Giovanni Lista compiled a 680-page book of Fuller-inspired art work and texts in Loïe Fuller, Danseuse de la Belle Epoque,1994. Recently, Stéphanie de Giusto directed the movie La Danseuse about the life of Loïe Fuller, with actresses Soko as Loïe, Jody Sperling choreographed Sokos dances for the movie, served as creative consultant and was Sokos dance coach, training her in Fuller technique. The movie was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, Fuller continues to be an influence on contemporary choreographers. Sperling, who re-imagines Fullers genre from a perspective, has choreographed dozens of works inspired by Fuller and expanded Fullers vocabulary. Sperlings company Time Lapse Dance consists of six dancers all versant in Fuller-style technique, another is Ann Cooper Albright, who collaborated with a lighting designer on a series of works that drew inspiration from Fuller’s original lighting design patents

Many older buildings of the University of Chicago employ Collegiate Gothic architecture like that of the University of Oxford. For example, Chicago's Mitchell Tower (left) was modeled after Oxford's Magdalen Tower (right).

Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer who performed to …

Image: Isadora Duncan portrait cropped

Duncan c.1916–18

Duncan in a Greek-inspired pose and wearing her signature Greek tunic. She took inspiration from the classical Greek arts and combined them with an American athleticism to form a new philosophy of dance, in opposition to the rigidity of traditional ballet.

Students of the Imperial Ballet School in Marius Petipa's Un conte de fées. A ten-year-old Anna Pavlova participated in this work in her first ever ballet performance. She is photographed here on the left holding the birdcage. St. Petersburg, 1891.